Present, tense: Despite a robust start to the holiday shopping season, sales this year are expected to trail last year’s solid results. Photo: AP

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Black Friday invaded Thanksgiving dinner this year, but it’s not clear how many extra sales were captured.

Big retailers including Walmart, Target, Sears and Toys ‘R’ Us flung open their doors Thursday evening in an aggressive grab for consumer wallets, hawking discounts on everything from flat-screen TVs to Furby dolls.

Nevertheless, the annual shopping frenzy yesterday was “off to a decent but not a great start,” according to Ken Perkins of research firm Retail Metrics.

Macy’s was “by far the busiest” department store in the malls, with sweaters, overcoats and boots selling briskly, according to Perkins. But he added that sales appeared to be driven by steep markdowns, with cashmere sweaters priced as low as $50 each.

By late morning yesterday, a Walmart store in Mount Laurel, NJ, was “pretty quiet,” said Wendy Liebmann of WSL Strategic Retail, an industry consulting firm.

“There’s a lot of pre-shopping going on today, people checking out the stores,” Liebmann says. “I’m not seeing that many people holding shopping bags.”

In addition to Thanksgiving openings, many retailers this year began offering their Black Friday discounts online at the beginning of the week. That stole some of Black Friday’s thunder, she said.

“The question is, ‘Is it quiet now because of all the shopping that’s already happened, or is it because people are incredibly cautious?’ ” Liebmann said.

US retail sales are expected to rise 4.1 percent to $586.1 billion this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. That’s a solid increase, but well short of last year’s 5.6-percent surge.

Nevertheless, midnight openings appeared to achieve a key objective for retailers this year: luring more young people out to shop.